The Rockdale plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1954. Next is 71° in 1954.
Rockdale’s center stands about 1,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,130 ft to 1,590 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pleasant Hill, about 1,620 ft, 3 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Venango Formation (siltstone, conglomerate), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 33×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Rockdale reaches the Gulf of America by way of Kelly Run, French Creek, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,130 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rockdale; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rockdale has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in February. A normal year brings about 89 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Rockdale normally reaches 49° and falls to 29°. The record high is 69°, in 1989; the record low 11°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.42 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1954 at Titusville Water Works, 19 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
